WFMU's Beware of the Blog

WFMU in the Moroccan Desert: Alchemy At Zahar Festival in April 18-21

In a never-ending quest to dig out the subterranean sounds from all corners of the earth, WFMU has hooked in with the first-ever Alchemy At Zahar festival for what's sure to be a most amazing event in the Moroccan desert province of Zagora on April 18-21st. The event, which is being put together as a philanthropic, government-sponsored endeavor to help create forward motion in a wells project in order to bring a dwindling population back into the province, will have support from the Alchemy Association, the Association of Development for People with Specific Needs (ADPSN) of Tagounite and the Association for Alphabetization of Tagounite. WFMU and our fellow freeform broadcast pals at KFJC in the Bay Area of California will conduct a joint broadcast (and hopeful video simulcast) from quite a bit of this event, which will feature an amazing cross-section of Western and African adventurous sounds:

Ahwach N Tferkine (traditional group from the Souss-Massa Drâa Region, featuring a choir of twelve female singers and four male percussionists), Kilimanjaro Darkjazz Ensemble (experimental/film noir European combo), Lee Ranaldo (w/Leah Singer, and his band), Pelican (post-rock Chicago metal ensemble), Brothers Unconnected (Alan and Rick Bishop of Sun City Girls, also performing solo sets), Master Musicians of Bukkake (playing the Totem Trilogy), AND the legendary Master Musicians of Jajouka, ethno-prog West Coast stalwarts Secret Chiefs 3, Portuguese psych band Black Bombino, Tinariwin d'Mhamid (young Tinariwen covers band!), Abraxas, and more (full lineup/updates here). A dream lineup for both stations.

The idea of riding six and a half hours from Marrakech to the desert town of M'hamid Al Ghislane, then taking 4x4s on sand tracks an hour away to a tent/stage setup almost at the Algerian border (the Screaming Dune of Zahar) isn't your usual WFMU remote, but with the support of the Festival to bring us out, we're up for the challenge! If all goes well we will be documenting the beautiful sights and sounds along the way, hopeful camel excursions to the well sites to boot. We're extremely excited to work with organizer Basile and Alchemy, and our friends from KFJC at this event. More info to follow, and please keep an eye on Alchemy's site and Facebook. Tickets and packages for the (intrepid) public and concertgoers is also on the site. Should be amazing!

 

Northern Haze: Badass Inuit Heavies

Igloolik, way up in the Canadian arctic some 1,800 miles north of Ottawa, seems to be an unlikely place for a heavy rock band to flourish, but Northern Haze have played a proud, uncompromised Sabbath-tinged catalogue of songs since 1978. In their native Inuit tongue. As the story goes, the four friends took up instruments provided by a local community center, most songs written by singer/guitarist Kolitalik Inukshuk. With cofounder Naisana Qamaniq they started up weekends gigs channeling faves like Pink Floyd, Hendrix, and Zep, but a clear vision started to develop quickly and the CBC took notice and ushered them into studios for demos and recording. Travel grants and growing notoriety allowed the band (at first called Northern Lights) to travel around Canada, and throughout they remained true to their wish to deliver their music to Northern communities with occasional festival shows in larger cities. CBC serviced limited edition LPs to stations and libraries and broadcast their music nationwide. Their activity slowed down in 1987 with a restart in 1999, then Elijah passed away from cancer in 2007, and Kolitalik was murdered only days later. The group revamped with a few new members, and in 2009 Jason Flower of Supreme Echo Records discovered their music while researching Canadian Inuit recordings. Flower trekked out to the Arctic with a documentary filmmaker in tow, three weeks of rekindled rock, nature treks and raw meat consumption ensued and now an amazing LP Sinnaktuq comprised of 1985-2010 recordings is out. Thanks to Jason for letting us share an MP3: "Qaina". Killer! Copies are fleeting, but we're told Numero and Fusetron have some.

Update: No Airplane for You

From the land that brought you St. Olav and Hornorkesteret came the oxymoronic competition to place the images of Famous Norwegians on the tails of airplanes belonging to the national airline. When I last wrote about this contest, Euronymous (aka Øystein Aarsteth) of Mayhem was wa-a-ay out in front in the voting, so I was astonished when I checked the final results and discovered that the winner was Ludvig Karlsen, a “beloved Norwegian Gypsy Christian Evangelist.”

Whu? The only info I could find out about him was in Norwegian, except for one English-language website of Famous Gypsies which lists Elvis Presley as a Famous Gypsy, so I don’t know what to say about Mr. Karlsen. But apparently Euronymous didn’t win the poll because his family asked that his name be withdrawn.

If this had happened in the US, it would be because the Authorities and Officials would have “asked” the family to withdraw his name to avoid the embarrassment of having a Black Metal guy in corpse paint on the tail of their plane. But Norwegians are actually proud of their black metal and the global influence it’s had on popular music, so I think maybe the story about the family is legit.

For a taste of what Norwegian music is up to now, here’s a bit of Hornorkesteret performing their soundtrack for the great silent film, Nanook of the North.

 

For black metal, and all kinds of other dark doings, check out the archives of Wm. Berger’s great WFMU show, My Castle of Quiet.

P.S. about the corpse paint: It kinda makes them look like Boston Terriers or pandas, doesn’t it? So scary!

Roadburn Recap 2012 Companion to Diane's Kamikaze Fun Machine

Tilburg, Netherlands was the place to be this weekend if you appreciate heavy music AT ALL. It's my 2nd trip to Roadburn, and not likely to be my last. This is the festival that screams community in all the right ways. The festival's head, Walter, crafts a lineup from the roots of doom, rock and riff heavy original rock to the latest avant garde satanic acoustic bands, and it all works! This is the companion post to go with my program airing today, April 19th from Noon-3pm (if you're reading this late, well go check out the archive!!). I hope listening to the music creates the feeling of what goes on at the fest; not likely though, as good as it may sound! There is just a sense of overwhelming appreciation at Roadburn, this year with one day curated by Voivod, and featuring a one man art show by drummer Away who has illustrated many album covers for Voivod and others, who also designed the main festival poster. The banners for Roadburn were waving at me when I walked out of the train station and I was happy to wave back to Away's artwork! Note the little flying saucers on the top corner of the banners! Feast your eyes on 200 photos below...and the rest of the experiences after the jump!

 

Live Room, Live Shows, Live Shots

A quick check-in from your kamikaze reporter... Since the marathon ended I've gotten out to check out a few bands: shots are in this order: Magic Circle from Boston, Windhand from Richmond, VA, Rhode Island's Pilgrim, a shot of Brooklyn's own Natur and then live in the WFMU studio on this past edition of My Castle of Quiet: Wretched Worst! This Thursday at noon, the PEER PRESSURE guest on my Kamikaze Fun Machine program will be Mike Hill, guitarist and songwriter/vocalist of TOMBS to DJ a set of music that's sure to be killer! Final photo in this bit is of TOMBS from last year's SXSW performance at Lovejoy's. Enjoy!

70,000 Tons: Metal Mutiny 2012 Edition

1 cruise ship, 4 days, 42 bands, 2,000 fans! Yes, I had to do it again! 70,000 Tons of Metal, 2012! I had such a great time last year that I had to go for a reprise and see what would happen! I've got a photo album here with many more photos, and this entry is the companion to my radio show, airing Thursday Feb 2nd at noon. When the archive is posted, it will be linked here.

It's true, I had a lot of prior experience, so I had already been on the same ship, Royal Caribbean's Majesty of the Seas, and knew my way around. The weather I was leaving was not nearly as horrendous as it was last year, but I was still looking forward to punishing my ears and my body for a possible 84 sets of music in 4 days. I arrived in Miami a day early to trek up to Ft. Lauderdale with one of my partners in crime for a Cannibal Corpse show, and to also pick up another partner in crime to head back to Miami. Why not get an early start on bludgeoning my senses? I have to admit we did find time to view a certain sporting event involving a NY team that day also. On to the cruise! Last year I never noticed how much was loaded onto the boat via crane; the pool stage was composed mostly of large items, let alone all the rigging, backline, etc. I watched the crane pluck pieces off the ground and onto Deck 11 for hours on Monday morning.

Ship Shaping 2012 In Shots So Far

I haven't gone to as many shows as I'd like yet this year, but I will be heading off on the 70,000 Tons of Metal Cruise next week; expect a special and enough photos to get you seasick! Here are a some shots from some shows I did manage to get out to!  

The three below = Night Birds at Lulu's in Brooklyn. I didn't get any pix of Nuclear Santa Claust, but should have; they're a great band as well who were also on the bill along with the Livids, Foster Care and Pampers. Night Birds were frantically nonstop with their faster-than-Southern-California hardcore and surf mix. It was guitarist Mike Hunchback's last gig with the band; fear not, folks, a replacement has already been working out with them, and he landed on the floor and played his heart out on his back for the fans' sneakers and boots.

Many more pics and commentary below!

Elvis To KLF: The Train I Ride Is Sixteen Coaches Long

Life with a three-year-old can find you focusing on on forms and representations of transportation you wouldn't otherwise. Trains, for example, hold a particular resonance with the developing mind that challenge their relative rarity compared to cars and airplanes. We've found ourselves meeting constant demands for all things trains by discovering the online world of obsessive documentarians of all things locomotive. Watching this narration-and-music-free modern footage of old-fashioned steam engines has caused us to consider the sensual impact the advent of train travel would have on the rural blues men who would incorporate the sound of trains into their music and use the eeire whistle of the coming train as a metaphor for all great changes in life, love and death.

Quintron's Magic House

For a couple of months here in New Orleans there was a house turned into a musical instrument. Built by Swoon, Mr. Quintron, and many others it housed 6 performances which were consistently the hottest ticket in town. Luckily I caught the last show on the last night which featured Michael Zerang, Miss Pussycat, Andrew W.K., Rob Cambre, and more more more (still trying to find a master list.*) I've included a video I shot, but below that is a better quality from a night I wasn't there, then some photos and a soundcloud recording. Explore more here: http://www.dithyrambalina.com

Storytelling In Japanese Art at the MET

Up through May 6th at the Metropolitan Museum of Art is an exhibit entitled "Storytelling In Japanese Art" with a main focus on the Emaki, or Emakimono hand scrolls; some dating as far back as the 12th century. What's interesting about these pieces is that they are physically lengthy, so only certain portions of the scrolls are available for viewing at a time. The scrolls will be advanced during the length of the exhibition, so if you visit more than once, chances are you'll see different sections of the scrolls, which contain illustrations as well as japanese character text. Some are faded and reflective of their age, and some are in phenomenal shape considering the fragility of the medium. The exhibition also includes full views of some of the handscrolls on iPad displays in the beautifully crafted reading room. The current of the presentation of the pieces is very fluid - literally, with a fountain by Isamu Noguchi in the center of the route and a study/bamboo mat room.

When visiting the exhibition, we learn narrative was not only told on the medium of the scroll; visitors will see illustrations on screens, fans, cards, hanging banners, books, kimonos and porcelain as well. Some are showing one or two ideas as a story, and other pieces have multiple scenes and many utilize the stylized cloud formations to separate panels or sections of the stories that is present in Japanese art through the years. Take a look at some of the details of this show in the photos after the jump and see if it doesn't pique your interest!

Meet Me In St. Louis? Only If You're A Giant Praying Mantis!

I went to St Louis for the Old School Tattoo Expo, where world renowned tattooer Lyle Tuttle celebrated his 80th birthday; here's a photo of his cake (it's the Frisco Flyer tattoo machine that he made and made famous). The highlight of the weekend, aside from reconnecting with Lyle and other great friends in the business for me- was the visit a few of us made to the 10 story City Museum there. A cross between the works of Antoni Gaudi and Mad Max, it's an amazing playground created for the most part, from junk! There was a ferris wheel on the roof, alongside the praying mantis dome, and on the same level was a schoolbus that was perched precariously with 2 wheels hanging off the roof for patrons to explore. There were slides on every floor; nope, not visual slides; the kind you plant your ass on and tumble down! One was a 10 story spiral slide, not unlike the style that comes to mind when referring to water parks. All types of sculpture and found object placement that was delightful, including an area with discarded architectural features - lions and gargoyles and lampposts, oh my! There is a section called the Enchanted Caves, which looked just like it sounded. Part of the museum had an aquarium within it; stocked with turtles and catfish, completely accessible if you wanted to pluck a turtle out of the water and walk around with him, you could! The aquarium (pictured left) was part of the maze of walk through/get lost in sculpture that made up the majority of the ground floor. I may not be describing it accurately, mostly because that's a difficult task; The City Museum defies categorization, which is a breath of fresh air this day and age. There's also a couple of bars, a smoothie joint and a thrift store within the museum's expanse, not to mention the fuselage of an airplane, a series of monkey bars that stretches countless yards, animal sculptures made of gears, a castle turret and more.

No words can really convey what goes on there; the photos featured after the jump will do some of the inventiveness and beauty of it justice, and the real experience can only be yours if you visit. Yes. It's an experiential kind of place. Show up in sneakers!

California Wander Report: Mercury Blues and The Great God Pan

Rainy Sunday in Hollywood. Dropping the family off to seek enlightenment in the hills of Echo Park, took the hour off to cash in pop-in-law birthday scrip at local Rockaway Records, an old school music collectibles mart where two-weeks-previous I'd seen the complete collection of Yellow Submarine figures with the PID sync of “Two Pauls" (all of which vanished from the walls by the time I returned.)

Mystified to fathom the $1.1K Rolling Stones box set and $750 Madonna 12” available, I settled on a dented copy of the Monterey International Pop Festival cd box set, (1992) mainly for it's odd yellow fabric cover, bereft of any information front or back save for a red print of The Great God Pan and the dates involved:

June 16 • 17 • 18 • 1967

Jammed the whole set after sunset, but not before catching a full rainbow stretching from the dark cloud above Paramount Pictures all the way to Belmont High School. (Side Note: research into the “Arrow of Evolution” mural at Belmont High led to further initiatory mysteries revealed in the murals at a different Belmont High on the opposite coast.) Either way, once home, opening the yellow box let forth a four hour flow of what the late, great John Fahey would demi-reverently refer to as enthusiasm.

The Best of the Northwest - Joe Preston and Seattle's EMP

I made a quick visit to Seattle's Experience Music Project not long ago. The current main exhibit is titled: NIRVANA: Taking Punk To The Masses, and coincides with the 20th birthday of the band's Nevermind record. The exhibit not only has tons of Nirvana memorabilia, but is really a goldmine of great music sources from that same period of time. The facility is right next to Seattle's Space Needle (it's that dented looking brass thing to the right of it), and is full of cool exhibits having to do with music and film. Here's a giant guitar sculpture that lifts 35 feet into the air like a stringed cyclone. In the lobby they were showing parts of the movie Avatar, but the filming was of the actors pretending to fly, pre-special effects. Interesting the prep involved and the faux wetsuits they wore that tracked their body movement so it would be easier to morph them with their rendered additions (wings, dragons, etc.) at a later time. Something about it reminded me of a short I saw once that was the filming of the dubbing of Poltergeist. It was a hilarious process actually. You'd think that dubbing a film is at least some kind of large production? That is what I thought and I was certainly proven wrong. Imagine a group of people sitting in a room all on folding chairs facing a screen. On the screen is a tickertape of words going by, and the lines spoken by each actor are in a different color and run across the screen in a different vertical position. The voice actors focus on their lines and stand up and shout them at the screen. There is a condenser microphone mounted in front of the screen in a central location. People were standing up, saying their lines, and sitting back down. They weren't watching the movie - it wasn't even playing! They all had scripts on their laps and were facing forward as if they were forced to. When the movie got a little nutty, those people were standing up, shouting their lines at this screen full of text, and quickly sitting back down again. It was surreal and deflating all at once- not exactly glamorous! It may be the same kind of activity going on at the stock market right now, and you know I'm not gonna go there!

Audio Letter Home from Europe 1983 / pt 3 of 3

We're back with more of the intrepid pair "A and L" (identities protected for reasons easily discovered on the tapes) on their wild and wooly vacation in Europa, Summer of 1983. In this final installment we will hear the delightful story of Donkey Kong in Greece, and hear some bizarre station IDs made on location ( by "Lurch" and "Putz" ) for my Santa Cruz radio show from those days. I actually had a request ( ! ) to hear more of this material when I posted parts one and two on WFMU here,  and I'm happy to be finally wrapping it all up. As to "what became of them..." I will say that they are both doing extremely well in their chosen careers and are probably just as outspoken and scatalogical as ever (I hope!). 

So -  on to the last surviving tape, all four cuts worth:

Tape # 2, 6-6-83           Tape # 2, 6-7-83                           Tape # 2, 6-11-83, Swedish It's Been Real station IDs                     Tape # 2, 6-11-83, the story of "Donkey Kong"

A Trip to the Moon - with Raymond Scott

Buckle up tight, pull the skin on your face back and hang on because we're going by rocket to the moon and our conductor is none other than that audio astronaut extraordinaire, Raymond Scott, and his crew the Quintet.   Actually, we'll be going on the voyage twice; once on the 10 - inch kid's record from the Children's Record Guild ( a division of the American Recording Society ), out of Toronto, Ontario,  and narrarated by Ralph Comargo. The project features five 'educational' songs with music by Scott (no author is credited for the records dialogue and lyrics) and sung by the Jean Lowell Chorus. The songs aside - the real star here is the multi-part composition "Dedicatory Piece to the Crew and Passengers of the First Experimental Rocket Express to the Moon", which has a lot of arrangement packed into a little package (and one of the longer song titles anywhere). The full album art can be found here.

Scott had released this cut on one of his series of Audivox records (AL -5000) in 1950 and the kiddie version dates from the same year. That rocket has some pretty big wings on it - ! Riding that solar breeze, I suppose. This charming ep is similar to many other 'space education' records from the next decade, except for the intricate, high-energy Raymond Scott touch, always distinctive.  We also have the original Audivox-label instrumental version on the launch pad for your perusal (From the Basta cd release Ectoplasm), which seems to be the same recording, different mix. I had been curious for some time to place the two versions side by side, and so here we have two space journeys, Raymond Scott-style.

By Rocket to the Moon                

Dedicatory Piece to the Crew and Passengers of the First Experimental Rocket Express to the Moon 

Watch a Bunch of Drunk Hicks Jump Over Fire

Many thanks to John Fell Ryan for showing me this one.  As Davy Rothbart, of Found Magazine, says on the back of the cassette, "Memorial Day 2000 is the finest find in the history of found stuff."  Twig Harper and Carly Ptak apparently found this home video at a Michigan yard sale of a memorial day bender in the woods.  Watch drunk hicks drive around in the mud in their trucks, jump over fire, set things on fire, wrestle in the mud, force each other to puke...every moment is magical....oh yes.  Twig and Carly, of course, are Baltimore's noisegods Nautical Almanac, and used to sell this video at their merch table.  Watch this one again and again, "the fuckin whip shit of all fuckin shitter bongers".

Uhhhh.....NSFW.

 

 

The Wondrous World of Bosch or Welcome to Hell!

Recently I went to The Netherlands for the Roadburn Festival. Thanks to Duane Harriot for running the Fun Machine for a week and not wrecking the gears! Last weeks episode was a full three hours of music and photos from the most enjoyable fest I have ever been to, and if you haven't checked it out, I highly recommend it (not because it's my program, mind you - it is my taste, but it was really programmed by those who put Roadburn together- thank them, not me)!

Since last year's festival was disrupted by a pesky volcanic eruption, I thought it would be wise to take an extra day ahead of the festival and eliminate the stress factor. I made my ever important sleeping bag connection ahead of time, and decided to head over to the town of 's-Hertogenbosch to check out the Jheronimus Bosch Art Center.

All of Bosch's works are in name museums, so I was not sure what to expect. This town probably would have no one paying attention to it except for their famous, intensely talented son. I'm not going to even go into describing his artwork here; if you are unfamiliar, go check out a link or two and get the scoop on this man.

The Art Center is housed in what had once been a church. It looks like a church, but when you step inside, all your senses tell you nearly right away (there's a large red curtain that separates the entrance from a lot of the exhibit area) that you may have actually stepped into a delightfully quirky version of hell. There is a telltale sculpture outside as well to tip you off, that in most ways, this was not going to be a religious experience, at least of a churchgoing nature.

The helpful women at the desk were concerned with the size of my backpack and could see I was being taxed by it's weight. They took it off my hands immediately although there was no coat room. The entrance fee was laughably cheap and I was given an audio guide to boot.  It was when I got to the other side of the curtain that I thought to myself "I'm going to be here for hours and hours"...

 

 

The Week In Live Music Photos

This week was juicy in terms of live shows to attend, I wanted to go to many, but have yet to clone myself and my jet propulsion unit is still at the shop. I cheated a bit, by having a band on the Fun Machine, to be able to provide you, the listener with some tracks aside from these pix, so here's a quick rundown!! Sunday March 27th, I caught Thin Lizzy at the Starland Ballroom. Brian Downey, Scott Gorham and Darren Wharton, all from the Lynott era were joined onstage by Marco Mendoza, Vivian Campbell and Ricky Warwick. The show was great, the set list was very different from the Sykes/Gorham era that ended rather unexpectedly the summer of 2009, and all is well! Here's a few shots from the show! Tuesday, Batillus made their way to Jersey City to douse the Fun Machine with some gasoline, torched

 

SXSW 2011: A Visual Landscape

I'm trying a new approach for this post. For multi-band events, my posts tend to be very very long, and the time it takes to do seems to make the effort moot, because they publish so far after the fact. So here are photos of some of the bands I took in at SXSW: bad vantage points are why some bands didn't make the cut. Here it is chronologically!    Below: 1/2 of Italy's The Secret, Keith Morris of Off!, Easy Action

    

A Very Brief Overview of German Hip-Hop

From Billy Jam, who will be broadcasting live from Dusseldorf, Germany today (3-6pm EDT, playlist here):

While German hip-hop as a musical movement didn't fully kick in until the early '90s technically the history of German rap dates back to 1980 when GLS United (three popular TV announcers) recorded and released the novelty single "Rappers Deutsch" - their German language reinterpretation of the Sugarhill Gang's worldwide hit single "Rapper's Delight." As a real culture, however, it wasn't until a few years later, with the European release of such hip-hop films as Beat Street and Wild Style, that the four elements of hip-hop culture were formally introduced to Germans. And it was the influence of these films that began the European country's longtime close association with graffiti and b-boying - something that continues to this day.

As the eighties progressed, German artists began recording hip-hop but the first wave of German hip-hop artists tended to emulate the American hip-hop artists that they heard and consequently rapped in English. Die Fantastischen Vier (the Fantastic Four) modeled themselves after their American rap heroes. At first they rapped in English but by the early nineties, when they achieved mainstream German success, they had adapted their native tongue following the lead of Advanced Chemistry who pioneered the way by not rapping in English, but in German. Advanced Chemistry's politicized German language 1992 single "Fremd in eigenem Land" (Foreign in Your Own Country) was a turning point for German hip-hop.